MANFRED. Lord Byron's powerful and imaginative "witch-drama," 'Manfred' (1817), was composed under the spell of the awe inspiring scenery of the Alps, which Byron had visited in 1816 on the tour through Germany and Switzerland recorded in the third canto of Harold.' The hero is a sort of com bination of Faust and of the Byronic type por trayed in the earlier verse tales, a lofty and defiant spirit, dwelling alone in a dark castle among the higher Alps, haunted by remorse for an act the nature of which we are left to guess. Seeking to interview the spirit of the dead Astarte, the victim of his crime, and to obtain her forgiveness, he calls tip the spirits over whom he has control and at length resorts to the abode of the evil principle itself. The ghost is evoked, but returns an ambiguous an swer to his question. On the morrow expires, after resisting a summons to repent from the old abbot of Saint Maurice and de fying the demons who have come to possess his soul. Some biographers have seen in the poem
a reflection of •its author's relation with his half-sister, Aurora Leigh. In any case Byron has made his hero in his own image, infusing into him the characteristic Byronic spirit of proud rebellion and passionate despair. In style the poet aims at and partly succeeds in achieving an imaginative grandeur commen surate with his superhuman theme. (Manfred' attracted the favorable notice of Goethe, to whose translated in his presence by Monk Lewis in 1816, Byron is indebted for some of the essential elements in his drama. Consult Works of Lord Byron> by R. H. Prothero) ; and History. of English Literature> (Vol. XII).